My Statehood Notebook

Welcome back for the Annexation edition of a peek inside my Texas History INB. If you would like to check out previous entries on setting up your notebook, maps, regions of Texas, Native Americans, European explorers, Spanish Missions, Colonization, the Texas Revolution, Republic of Texas, or Annexation just click on the title. 

Wow! You have made it through more than half of the Texas History curriculum, way to go you! This was always the point in the timeline that I started to breathe, because it becomes more familiar to students and I just get the sense that we are going to make it. 

One major misconception that many of my students had is that things were all rainbows and unicorns once Texas became a state in the United States. They are sometimes heartbroken to find out that the great state of Texas struggled for quite some time after joining the union. This first fold-up, shown above, details the four main challenges that Texas faced. I always love the discussion that these challenges lead us into, because they are still issues that plague the world today.

Texas did have some really great things going for it though! Possibly the most important was the availability of farm land that led to three valuable cash crops. After discussing what a cash crop is, I love to have students guess what the cash crops were. Usually they get corn pretty quickly and can be lead to wheat, but they never think of cotton as a crop, which I find fascinating.

I also really enjoy discussing all the things that can be made from cotton. They are always excited to make an anchor chart full of items, and are thrilled when they find out that they are actually wearing cotton. The big item, that they are always surprised about, is out paper currency!

Once we have established that cash crops were an important part of Texas gaining economic status in the union, we talk about the population boom and why people came to Texas. Students are usually familiar with these ideas since we also learned about them during our unit on the colonization of Texas.

We finish up the unit with some important dates to the new state. These dates are important to the formation of Texas, and lead into our next unit nicely. 

Want More Texas History Goodness?

Subscribe to get our latest content by email along with tips on how to rock Texas History content!

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Email Address

I'd like to receive the free email course. Powered by ConvertKit